Plenty of dance partners at High Performance Rodeo

Photo courtesy Katy Whitt
Nicole Charlton in The Dybbuk, Caravan Dance Theatre’s dance opera, which is premiering at the 2013 High Performance Rodeo in Calgary, Alberta.

Photo courtesy: Paul McGrath
When High Performance Rodeo Executive Director Erin O’Connor saw a studio production of Alberta Ballet dancer Yukichi Hattori’s Up Close, her first thought was, ‘This is a Rodeo show!’ The dance performance piece, with new pieces by Denise Clarke and Hattori, is part of the 2013 High Performance Rodeo.

If dance is a way to tell stories through physical language, the 2013 High Performance Rodeo speaks it fluently.

That’s partly because the legendarily eclectic festival, which kicks off Friday night with the 2013 edition of the 10 Minute Play Festival, is being presided over this year by Erin O’Connor, a former champion Highland dancer (and Young Canadian) who has also worked with Decidedly Jazz Danceworks.

“The arts speak to you in lots of different voices and languages,” O’Connor says, “but it was the kinesthetic way that was the easiest for me, immediately.

“That’s my first love of the arts,” says O’Connor. “For me, it’s close to music in its non-verbal ability to elicit emotion and feeling.

“You don’t forget it,” she says. “You understand the feelings, the full-bodied feeling of that experience (when you watch dance).”

The 2013 High Performance Rodeo will showcase some of the city’s finest choreographers, including Alberta Ballet’s Yukichi Hattori and Alexandrous Ballard, One Yellow Rabbit’s Denise Clarke, La Caravan Dance Theatre’s Maya Lewandowsky, as well as visiting artists such as Winnipeg’s Freya Bjorg Olafson and Ireland’s ponydance, who both incorporate dance into their performances in unconventional ways.

For O’Connor, watching dance these days is a unique combination of pleasure and pain.

“It’s actually quite hard for me to watch dance now,” she says, “because I do get — very verklempt is the word I use — because I miss it.

“(Watching) it affects you in a certain way.”

However, the pain faded fast the first time she experienced Hattori’s Up Close.

“But,” she says, continuing, “when I went to see the Up Close studio production of Yukichi’s piece, I got over it so quickly that in my head, there was a voice saying, it’s a Rodeo show, it’s a Rodeo show, I have to get this in the Rodeo!

“Immediately (after),” she adds, “as soon as the applause stopped — I just went up to (Alberta Ballet artistic director) Jean (Grand-Maitre) and grabbed (Alberta Ballet executive director) Marty (Bragg) and just said, ‘How can we get this in the Rodeo next year?’ ”

She got it in — adding a new all-female piece choreographed by Clarke to complement Hattori’s all-male piece, as well as a duet choreographed by Ballard.

“I knew that it would appeal to an audience,” says O’Connor, “in the way that it was contemporary, immediate, visceral dance that you could see the sweat flying, see the emotion (and) the physicality.”

And for those who prefer that their storytelling involve more than simply physical language, the other dance-oriented pieces in the Rodeo are notable for crossing over and mixing and matching with other artistic disciplines.

With The Dybbuk, Lewandowsky’s La Caravan Dance Theatre has transformed a 19th-century Hebrew folk tale into a contemporary dance opera.

Olafson’s Avatar incorporates a live video feed into her performance, exploring the 21st-century phenomenon of recreating yourself inside a laptop.

And ponydance, a gonzo Irish dance group, incorporate outrageous comedy into their site-specific dance to create an experience that looks to be quite silly, in all the best senses of the word silly.

“It’s a mix of artistic disciplines,” O’Connor says. “Something wild, challenging, interesting and fun for everyone — so you’re guaranteed to find something you like even if it’s a little outside your comfort zone.”

Not that lovers of actual language are being left out of this year’s Rodeo — hardly.

If anything, the 2013 Rodeo offers a lineup that has somehow pulled from an array of international, national and local artists to create what O’Connor suggests will be “a dirty, old-school Rodeo” full of spontaneous theatrical combustion that erupts throughout January.

That includes a critically-acclaimed Icelandic adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which has played London and is en route to a run at the Brooklyn Art Museum (BAM); Ride the Cyclone, a national smash that O’Connor describes as Glee if they were all zombies; Schlachter Tango, a late-night offering by Germany’s Theaterlabor (performed in Calgary by Rabbit Andy Curtis); Daniel McIvor’s latest solo show, This is What Happens Next, exploring mid-life and storytelling; Onalea Gilbertson’s Blanche: Blanche, The Bittersweet Life of a Wild Prairie gal; Belgian transsexual artist Vanessa Van Durme’s Look Mummy, I’m Dancing; Sonic Waves, an Icelandic-Calgarian musical event; a noon-hour series of performances and lectures; another Freak Show; a late-night cabaret; The Walrus Talks; and an afternoon parade celebrating The Year of The Snake through the Plus-15s.

To top it all off, there’s a new Rabbits show, People You May Know, which O’Connor describes as a digital puppet show that tells the story of a Ponzi scheme.

“I think we (at the Rodeo) try to be edgy and unpredictable,” she says, “and I think this is a year where we are going vintage, classic, old school rodeo, and that is unpredictable. There’s no formula for it.”

For O’Connor, the physical language of dance proved not only to be a passion, but her gateway into a career.

“It just starts opening doors,” she says, “so I just started training in different areas and kept getting propelled into different kinds of dance.

“And then,” she adds, “as you become an adult and begin to figure things out (grow up), and you (think) you’re going to put it on a shelf — it comes back (again) and says not yet!”

Including the time, as a young, brash Calgary dancer, she travelled to Scotland and, without quite knowing what she was doing, punked the old country.

“I was the North American champion,” she says, “I did win some big thing at the big thing in Scotland, but don’t say world champion.

“I wasn’t up on all the rules,” she says. “It’s like figure skating (with all of its protocols) — all the tartans, and lengths of this and not doing this — it changes all the time.

“So anyway,” she adds. “I wasn’t quite up to snuff at it exactly, so yes — (winning) it did turn some (Scottish) heads.”

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